Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford win the 2026 Nobel economics prize

Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford win the 2026 Nobel economics prize. The award was announced on October 12.

The official citation: “for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.”

Hall, at Stanford University, and Woodford, at Columbia University, helped rebuild models used to decide how governments and central banks should respond to economic shocks.

The key is how people and businesses make decisions. Their models connect choices about spending, saving and prices to the economy as a whole. Those choices depend partly on what people expect to happen next.

That means a central bank’s message about future interest rates can matter alongside the rate it sets today. The research helps policymakers judge how taxes, public spending and monetary policy might soften recessions or restrain an overheating economy.

They share the 12 million Swedish kronor prize equally.

Read the Nobel committee’s explanation.

Image: Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach.